This post might not go where you expect, but it won't take long for me to take the fork in the road (fork you, cancer?).

Last night I happened upon - well that's not strictly true... it's not as if I tripped over it: I planned to watch it - a fascinating documentary about the industry which has sprung up around the emotive issue of breast cancer. I'm such a cynical old bastard sometimes, but usually that's the result of having been around the block more times than was my fair share, and being a bit dizzy as a result.

My family has been relatively fortunate with regard to cancer's impact upon us. I say this in the full knowledge that cancers tend to be (despite the headlines and endless appeals on social media to the contrary) diseases of the elderly, but my family has lost a lot fewer members than many others to cancers. Of course, in the modern era, this does not mean that I'm unaware of the risks and likelihood of myself or someone I love being diagnosed, but as a matter of statistical fact, my family has been relatively lucky - not untouched, but less so than many others. perhaps this allows me a little emotional room; room to step back and say to myself: "Hang on a bloody minute!"

I have a simple question - and some of the answers were hinted at last night in the documentary that I watched: Where has all the billions of dollars gone? What have been the results of all the research that we have been told is being done into cancer? The numbers quite literally run into many, many billions of dollars, and yet we seem to be little closer to a cure for any of the cancers than we were when I was a child (oh so many years ago!). I've had my unsubstantiated suspicions for many years about this - we are almost constantly bombarded with messages about various types of cancer, and pressure is brought to bear about contributing to charitable causes in order to fund research into cures. And yet...

The documentary offered some validation for my suspicions last night: research into the research has indicated a complete lack of networking, a lack of coordination and of course, a lack of results. It would seem - and if this isn't criminal negligence, I don't know what is - that many experiments are constantly being repeated by different researchers, that many experiments are in fact conducted merely into the efficacy of proprietary drugs rather than the diseases themselves, and that, on the whole, there is a great deal of pointless buggering about going on.

If I wasn't such a gobshite*, I'd be speechless.

*You may want to Google 'gobshite' - trust me: it's worth it - you will discover a word which fits at least one person that you work with.

People are dying while charities - many of which seem to exist purely to...well, exist - take immense amounts of money and funnel it towards 'research' which seems to be getting nowhere fast. how wrong does it have to get before governments start to pay attention? And yes, you're right: there is more than a hint of sardonic fatalism in that last question...

Cancer is, of course, very real - I don't need to remind you of that - but perhaps the group of industries hovering around The Big C is after all, just the biggest CON that we have all ever bought into...